NanoDays Celebration at WOW! Children's Museum

Lafayette, CO: WOW! Children’s Museum (World of Wonder) presents NanoDays™ 2009, part of the second annual nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering and its potential impact on the future. The largest public outreach effort in nanoscale informal science education, NanoDays events, organized by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), will take place March 28 - April 5, 2009, at over 200 science museums, research centers, and universities across the country from Maine to Hawaii.

NanoDays activities create unique learning experiences for both children and adults to explore the miniscule world of atoms, molecules, and nanoscale forces. In one popular activity, visitors help build a giant balloon model of a carbon nanotube. Real carbon nanotubes, which are 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair, have a unique cylindrical structure, extraordinary strength, and unusual electrical properties making them useful in electronics and materials science. Other NanoDays explorations at WOW! Children’s Museum demonstrate unexpected properties of materials at the nanoscale like leaves that won’t get wet, and water that won’t spill from a teacup.

“Nanoscience is all around us”, says Dr. Nikki Delaney, Science Coordinator at WOW! Children’s Museum. “The colors of iridescent butterfly wings and the stickiness of gecko feet come from nanoscale structures. By studying how nature uses nanostructures, we can invent new materials with really interesting properties.”

WOW! Children’s Museum will host NanoDays activities on March 28th from 10:00am-12:00pm and March 29th from 12:00pm-2:00pm and March 31st through April 3rd from 10:00am-2:00pm. All NanoDays activities are included with Museum admission. Call for information about volunteering!

About WOW!: Founded in 1996, WOW! Children's Museum (World of Wonder) is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization that offers educational and interactive exhibits for children – bringing families together in a safe environment that sparks imagination, inspires learning and nurtures growth through play.

For more information: Contact WOW! at 303-604-2424 or visit www.wowmuseum.com. WOW! is located at 110 N. Harrison Avenue in downtown Lafayette.